Save This Dog – posted by Dave in Texas April 2, 2006

They got him when I was out of town. Called it in so to speak. Daddy, we got a puppy.

A beagle.

An effin Beagle.

He has chewed through, oh let’s see, three places in the sofa, about a thousand rolls of toilet paper, 5 chair legs, every sprinkler control cover (AND the wiring), my last briefcase, most of the door trim on the back door, one of my dress shoes, 5 DVDs, 7 pillows, and 3 belts. He barks incessantly at squirrels, which frankly I can’t give him too much grief over but shut the hell up already! He will always leap up on my bed when I’m not around to tell him not to, and he always come sucking up all apologetically when I yell at him to get his furry ass OFF the bed. He is a relationship abuser. I figure so far he’s been about a $3400 problem, but he’s on his game and he’s not done.

I do not expect much of a return on my investment. Actually, I think I’m about to write him off and take my loss like a man. And you know what that means. He’s about to join the choir invisible. His metabolic processes are about to cease.

You can save this dog. You know you want to. Just look at him. He isn’t a bad dog. He’s a kid. With a dog crack habit or something, hell I don’t know what’s wrong with him. If I did I would have fixed it already. So it’s desperate measure time. He’s going to die. He is and that’s that.

Unless you step in. You can intervene. You can save him. I will pay you, ok, pretty much whatever you want up to my damages, and shipping, just to take him off my hands. I’ll tell everybody here he ran away. That’s plausible, given his “oh look, the door’s open” behavior, hell we spent an hour coaxing him back last time. And given the damages, and the money spent, I’m sure I can convince the fam we can’t do this again.

Otherwise, it’s a bullet to the head. Those of you who know me and squirrels, know I’m capable of it. So what do you say? I’ll give you a week. He’s a goner after that. I mean, he’s got his moments, but I can’t take it anymore. You can though, he’s much better than he was and I’m just bitter about the past. Save him. You know you want to.

Even Mrs. Dave won’t be able to save him if he nibbles on the new Galco holster.

In the Annoying bark category Beagles are number 3.
In the Loudness to weight ratio, they are number 1.
(Your actual mileage may vary)

The neighbor’s son brought home a Beagle puppy, named it Snoopy (surprise!). When he moved out, he left the dog who destroyed their home. I’m not sure how he trashed the venitian blinds six feet high, but he did, along with p’ing on the furniture and other insults. After 6 months of being Home-Alone, he wandered off. They think someone stole him. I had no opinion.

Forget about “Dog Whisperers” and other silly charlatans. There are simple tools and methods available, that work on practically any dog, except possibly an old pit-bull who’s part “Mississippi Leg Hound.”🙂

First things first: you train the dog to walk at your side, stopping, starting and sitting at your discretion, using a good sturdy leash and a correctly-sized and “installed” choke-collar. To some people, the idea of a “choke-collar” or choke-chain seems cruel, but believe me, you’ll be choking the dog a helluva lot less after one or two good hard corrective yanks, than you would with a year of tugging ineffectually on a regular collar. Very quickly, depending on the dog’s intelligence and your willingness to vigorously correct him, he’ll be responding to the jingle of the collar, and you won’t even have to yank him, except once in a great while when something crazy-exciting gets his dander up (a squirrel, or a ball bouncing past, etc.).

My dog trainer has “saved” two big dogs for us, 15 years apart, and learned his trade training German Shepherds for the Army, back in the ’60’s. I would have had to get rid of both animals, most likely, they were so “alpha” in their rebellious phase. I’ve seen dogs as huge as those German “lion dogs,” enormous Rotties, and tiny Yorkies, all in the same class, all being trained with the same method. It works, is the bottom-line.

Finally, for use around the home, when he’s off-leash, the solution is also mind-numbingly simple. You take about 10 empty pop or beer cans, and you put about 5-8 marbles in each one, duct-taping them closed. They should make a nice loud rattle, now. Set them in a handy place, in a grocery bag on the counter, for instance, or next to your La-Z-Boy. Here comes the fun part, which also happens to be the coup de gras on bad indoor behavior:

When Fido/Spot/Aristophanes begins to chew on the table leg, growl and behave aggressively, crouch into defensive-position when you try to take your running shoe out of his mouth, whatever, you commence firing the loaded cans at him. Hit him with the whole bag, the first time, chasing him if you have to. He’ll think you’ve lost your marbles, no pun intended.

Very quickly, you’ll have established dominance, and you’ll be able to get his attention and modify his behavior just by shaking a can, or mentioning the words “I’ll get the can,” or just “CAN!” My 10 year old daughter worked this system to perfection on our latest dog, who’s now a 3-yr-old sweetheart of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, who happens to be way-oversized for his breed (120 lbs of muscle and slobber). He had gotten into the habit, at 4 months of age, of knocking her down and sitting on her. Took 5 minutes of this form of behavior-mod, to turn her into the Alpha doggie.

If you want to talk to the man who saves dogs, call “Dan Morris Dog Training,” in Livonia, MI, at 734-427-7940. Tell him a very-satisfied customer sent you. I’ve referred several friends and acquaintances to him in the past 10 years, and he’s never failed anyone that I’ve heard about.

He’s actually learning to behave, most of his bad habits are behind him now. We just work on the next new thing. He leaves the furniture alone now, housetraining went pretty well, and he will stop jumping and running if you use the “command voice”.

There was a time when he went nuts sniffing everything on walks, and went into his “hunting em down” trance, but he’ll walk along with you now. Can’t let him go yet, but I see a day when we could.

He really does want to please you… if I fuss at him he will lay down, or come to me with his tail between his legs. Can’t stand to have you mad at him.

As far as chewing goes, he has lots of toys and bones, if you tell him to go get one he will, and the rest of it is a combination of “don’t leave your expensive shoes laying around” and a little diligence. Similar to the house training thing, we didn’t go the newspaper route, we just watched him like a hawk and got him out when it was time.

Beagles are evil. Agility and personality of cats and stubborness of mules. We took care of my sister-in-law’s beagle for a month – it would jump up on the tables and counter to eat anything. It ate a starfish off our kitchen table. And of course it knew exactly what it was doing – it would wait until we were out of the room for a minute or two beofre it would break every rule we would try to instill in it.

Moses was saved by the timely intervention of the Innocent Bystanders Commenter Community™, which selected him as an official crimefighting site mascot (see “About” tab above for picture of Moses in action). Dave, normally a heartless bastard, was thereby shamed into sparing his life.

lolol…. me and my fiance saw an add in the paper for a free beagle… well knowing that imma dog lover, we went and picked her up. besides my fiance use to have a beagle and sais he loves them. anyways… i wish i hadnt seen the add in the paper because gahh this dog=hella annoying. she gets up on the tables, gets into the garbage and tries to eat the food off my 1 year old sons highchair when he is eating. >

Got to figure out what works with the particular animal. My female Cattle Dog was pretty easy to train, and she’s feisty but not stubborn. A harsh word gets through to her.

My boy? Oh my God. He’s both smart and hardheaded.

He is a very rough-and-tumble dog, as I learned when every time I’d play with him he’d go too wild. Many times I’ve had to pry his jaws off me by squeezing his snout.
This one time he had me by the wrist and was holding real hard. I started whaling on his head with my other fist.
He responded by shutting his eyes and clamping down a little harder.

Only thing that works with this particular dog is isolation. When he did wrong, I put him in another room for three minutes.
Total turnaround in attitude. He’s almost a good dog now.

Tidbit. We learned that Mighty Mo was not raised with his litter mates, so he didn’t learn about the power of his bite. When he was a pup he’d give you just a little too much, but someone told me they instinctively back off when they here a puppy whimper.

One day he gave me the crunch, and I made a whiny puppy sound (shut up you bastards, I was training him). Moses got it instantly and let go. After a few of those he never did it again.

Get one of those cones that goes over their head. It keeps them from licking/chewing themselves until whatever is bothering them goes away. Also some dogs have skin allergies which you can’t see but causes them to chew. Take her to the vet.

As far as we know, Dave hasn’t shot a pet since 2007. That’s a hell of a long time in dog years. Also, no domestic animal shootings since the Obama election? Hello? Why don’t we try to give the guy some support instead of nitpicking his firearm/anger issues?